


grace coming out of the void

by Jynguo



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jynguo/pseuds/Jynguo
Summary: Five times Yusuf al-Kaysani kills Nicolò de Genova, and the one time he decides: no more.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	1. Jerusalem

**Author's Note:**

> My knowledge of history and geography are both laughably lacking. I did my best to fill in the gaps with research, but if there are any glaring mistakes, please do let me know.
> 
> Title from The Atheist Christmas Carol by Vienna Teng

They meet in the streets of the Holy City. Neither of them understand in that moment the significance of the other.

There was a general feeling in the first few weeks that the Franks would be easily repelled. Their numbers have dwindled since Antioch, and Iftikhar al-Dawla has done what he could to hinder their passage. The wells are poisoned, the trees are gone, and the city walls are guarded by men prepared to die against the invaders. Relief is coming from Egypt. Jerusalem needs only hold on long enough for the forces to arrive.

But the days stretch on, and tension ratchets higher within both the garrison and the citizenry. Word reaches Yusuf: more men, recently docked at Jaffa, bringing supplies and swelling the ranks of the army at the northern gate. He watches from the wall as they assemble some great machine in the distance, and he feels deep within his heart that he is looking upon the beginning of a terrible thing. He hasn’t slept well since the siege began, but his dreams these nights are haunted by particularly vivid images of pale-skinned men, their eyes flecked with ice.

The end descends in a fury. The fighting begins on the walls but pours quickly into the city, the Franks swarming over the wall and opening the gates so they can spill onto the streets. The sound of battle floods the air, though if Yusuf is being honest, it’s his own lust for blood pounding through him that drowns out his thoughts.

There is no moment of revelation. Yusuf does not meet anyone’s gaze and recognize that he is looking upon his own death. He only knows the weight of the sword in his hands and that he cannot afford to stop moving.

When he dies, he does so on the blade of a man with eyes flat with hate. Yusuf swings upwards even as a starburst of pain explodes within his chest, and he sees, through the descending mist, that he’s managed to hit his mark. Yusuf holds himself up just long enough to watch Nicolò crumple.

His final vicious, gleaming thought is that at least he took the damned Frank with him.

* * *

Yusuf kills Nicolò a second time that day. And a third. A fourth, also, after which he loses the count.

Eventually he realizes--both of them realize--that the other man won’t stay dead. It becomes almost an academic exercise, to see if any sort of death will keep.

Not a one does.

Yusuf turns away first. He gasps his way up out of yet another death and realizes that he is tired. Blood coats his face and his hands; it pools in the street, spreading slowly from more bodies than Yusuf cares to count. He hears screams from the residential quarters and notes numbly that it sounds like a child.

The Frank is rising on unsteady legs, his sword heavy in his hand. His hair is matted against his face by blood, but his eyes beneath it are steely and intent on Yusuf.

“Enough,” Yusuf says.

He leaves, then. He follows the screaming, but before he can reach its source, the noise abruptly cuts away. Yusuf finds instead a woman pressed against a wall, her arms wrapped tight around a small, still form. Her face is blank, and she will not look at him.

Footsteps sound behind him, and Yusuf turns, belatedly bringing his sword up. That is how he dies again: knowing that he has protected no one, and that all his deaths have been in vain.


	2. Alexandria

They meet again in Alexandria. Yusuf would not have thought to recognize him after two decades, but apparently you don’t forget the face of a man after he’s killed you half a dozen times.

Yusuf has just returned to Egypt after years of throwing himself into books. He’d originally had a vague notion of crossing to the peninsula, where he knew there was a school at which men studied the human body and debated natural philosophy. The way he saw it, if he was to find a solution to the problem of his undying, it would be in Salerno.

He made it as far as Tripoli, with several long stops along the way, before he realized he had no immediate interest in crossing the sea. He looked at the water and experienced a memory of nausea so strong, he swore the ground rocked beneath his feet. Ordinarily he would have pushed on regardless, but this time he changed his course and veered instead towards Morocco, where he lingered for the better part of a year before joining a caravan headed for Egypt. He rents a room in Alexandria, carefully does not think about his family in Cairo, and is haggling over a handful of dates one morning when he looks up and sees Nicolò coming in through the sea gate. 

Of course, Yusuf doesn’t know that he is Nicolò yet. He knows only that this is the steel-eyed man from Jerusalem, the hand at which Yusuf did not die. Even from such a distance, he recognizes him, and he feels that recognition as a jolt down to his bones.

Yusuf slits the man’s throat in the alley behind the Genoese merchants’ _funduq_. He tells himself that this is vengeance, repayment for all the bodies the Frank left behind in Jerusalem. 

It is poor vengeance, though. The rage and hatred Yusuf has evidently been nurturing these twenty years sputters out with that single act of violence, and he slumps against the wall, the knife dangling from nerveless fingers. He watches the blood pool around the man’s neck, forces himself to keep watching as the gaping wound in his throat closes.

The Frank comes back to life quietly. His eyes open and blink for a moment at the sky before his gaze comes to rest on Yusuf. When Yusuf doesn’t move, he carefully pushes himself up to sit, grimacing slightly when his hand lands in the puddle of his own blood.

“I wondered when our paths might meet again,” the man says. His Arabic is heavily accented but serviceable.

“You expected it,” Yusuf says.

“It seemed inevitable.” The man starts to climb to his feet, hesitating once he’s in a crouch to check if Yusuf will object. 

Yusuf doesn’t say anything. He does, however, readjust his grip on the knife.

The Frank rises, absently wiping his hand off on the side of his coat. It doesn’t accomplish much, considering the blood already soaked through the fabric, and he grimaces again as his palm comes away still red. “I liked this coat,” he says.

“Forgive me for not being particularly sorry.”

The Frank’s mouth twists. He looks as if he might like to respond to that, but in the end he only snorts softly. “Do you plan to kill me again?” he asks with a glance at the knife.

Yusuf takes a moment to think about it. “No.”

For some reason, this is enough to satisfy the man. He nods and strips off the coat, folding its flaps around the worst of the blood. Some of it had spattered onto the shirt beneath, but it’s nothing that wouldn’t be mistaken for wine from a distance.

Once he has his coat sorted to his liking, the man turns back to Yusuf. The moonlight limns the sharp lines of his face, floods his eyes with silver, and Yusuf feels the world heave.

“You look ill,” the man says.

Yusuf stares at him. “I used to dream about you.”

The man seems...relieved, Yusuf thinks. He breathes out a sigh and says, “And I used to dream of you.” His voice is very soft when he adds, “I thought it was God pointing me towards the devil.”

Yusuf’s hand tightens on the knife. “And yet you let me walk away.”

“I realized there were devils closer to home.”

Silence settles, full of thorns.

“My name is Nicolò,” the man says finally. 

Yusuf had thought he was coming to grips with this world he cannot leave, but evidently Allah is not yet done testing him. He looks at this man, this soulless barbarian whom he had last seen standing amidst the ruins of his life, and has to swallow around the stone in his throat before he is able to say: “I am Yusuf.”


	3. The Desert

They get thrown out of the caravan halfway to Marrakesh. An unfortunate string of coincidences culminates in the _khabir_ seeing Nicolò recover too quickly from a snakebite and drawing the obvious conclusions: that the Frank is a demon, that he has corrupted Yusuf somehow, and that both men must be expelled before they doom everyone else. Nicolò attempts to intervene on Yusuf’s behalf, but that only cements Yusuf’s fate. The _khabir_ is at least decent enough to leave a small tent and several liters of water for Yusuf, but that amounts to very little out in the vast, unrelenting heat of the Sahara. 

When the caravan begins to pull away, one of the traders lingers behind the others. Yusuf recognizes him; Nicolò had helped him redistribute his packs when his camel picked up a limp. “May Allah guide you,” the man says, pressing a water skin into Yusuf’s hand. He casts a glance towards Nicolò before urging his animals back into the procession.

Yusuf shoulders his bag and watches the caravan disappear into the distance. “The last oasis was not so far from here,” he says. “We should be able to reach it in three days’ time. Two, if we push through the nights.”

“There is not enough water for three days,” Nicolò says.

Yusuf smiles grimly at him. “Then it is a good thing we cannot die.”

Naturally they do die, several times apiece. Yusuf overestimated how much their dehydrated bodies are able to withstand. They walk as far as they can through each bitter night, but they never both survive to see the morning. One or the other of them will stumble, his body pushed past its endurance, and the other will stop to prop up the tent while he’s still capable of it. 

They spend their days beneath the tent, shielded from the worst of the heat, doling out the water in stingy mouthfuls. They talk only when the silence is too much to bear, their words scraped raw from parched throats.

On the fourth day, Yusuf sees a figure on a camel wavering against the late afternoon sun. He shields his eyes and squints, debating whether he should attract the man’s attention. Yusuf’s instinct is to avoid bandits where possible, but at this point, bandits are less a threat and more a potential source of water.

He’s still thinking about it when the distant figure raises a bow and lets loose an arrow.

Yusuf dodges reflexively. The arrow whistles past his ear, and he hears a grunt beside and a little behind him. He turns just in time to watch Nicolò topple, the arrow lodged in his chest.

Yusuf is on the ground immediately. “The rider,” Nicolò hisses through clenched teeth, and Yusuf looks towards the dune where the man had been. The camel is loping away in the opposite direction, so Yusuf returns his attention to Nicolò, who has gone a remarkable shade of white beneath his skin.

“You cannot heal around that,” Yusuf says.

Nicolò attempts to raise a hand to the arrow, but the effort leaves him breathless.

Yusuf has seen enough violence in his lifetime to know that pulling an arrow out by its shaft is a very poor idea. Too many men have survived the initial injury, only to die from blood loss or from further damage caused by an arrowhead left behind. He doesn’t have the time or the knowledge to deal with this properly, but he’s also well aware that he can’t leave things as they stand, with Nicolò’s body attempting to repair itself around the arrow embedded in it.

With no better option on the horizon, Yusuf pulls his dagger out, places a hand on Nicolò’s shoulder to hold him still, and cuts his throat.

Nicolò bleeds out without a sound. As soon as the life leaves him, Yusuf steels himself and sinks his blade into Nicolò’s chest. He digs the arrow out as quickly as he can, cutting with more haste than precision, and resolutely does not overthink what he is doing. Fortunately the arrow missed the bone, and it doesn’t take long for Yusuf to make a gap wide enough for him to pull the arrow out in its entirety.

The next few minutes stretch long. Yusuf cleans his knife and does not look Nicolò in the face. He can hear his body mending, flesh knitting back together, but even after his chest has closed up again, Nicolò does not wake. Most of the blood has already soaked into the sand, so Yusuf cannot judge exactly how much he lost. Enough, he hopes, to explain why it’s taking him so long to recover--hopes that it’s the degree of trauma slowing down the process and not that Yusuf has given him his true death.

The quiet gasp, when it finally comes, is a relief.

Yusuf slides the knife back into his belt and turns to Nicolò. Nicolò remains on his back, eyes closed against the sinking sun, his breath coming shallowly. Yusuf waits, and eventually Nicolò levers himself up. Yusuf sees his gaze track towards the arrow, which lies discarded in the sand, its head gleaming with gore beneath the waning light.

Wordlessly, Yusuf hands the last waterskin to Nicolò.

Nicolò uncaps it and takes a small swallow. “Finish it,” Yusuf says, and Nicolò glances at him, eyebrows slightly raised.

Yusuf busies himself with rearranging the meager contents of his bag. After a pause, he hears Nicolò tilt the waterskin back and drink. Yusuf waits for him to finish before climbing to his feet, bracing himself as he rises for another night of walking until he dies.

Nicolò never brings up the fact of Yusuf slitting his throat yet one more time.


	4. The Sea

Yusuf learns Ligurian. Nicolò had a head start, having taught himself Arabic for his trade, but Yusuf is a quick study and has besides picked up a bit of the language while traveling along the coast. Nicolò explains about the various dialects but generally agrees that Genoese may be best suited for Yusuf’s purposes, not least because Nicolò can instruct him.

On the ship out of Tunis, Nicolò looks slightly green for the first day or two and so isn’t much of a conversational partner. Yusuf stays close, partly to keep an eye on him and partly to practice his Ligurian on the carpenter’s mate, a young man of perhaps eighteen who keeps coming around to inquire after Signor di Genova’s health.

“You have an admirer,” Yusuf observes after one such visit.

Nicolò tips his head back against his pack and says, “I offer little enough to admire just now.”

Yusuf disagrees, though he knows not to say so aloud. He had expected to despise Nicolò as much as he does the circumstances that produced him, but he’s found over the past year that the man is as generous as he is intelligent, with a streak of dry humor that still catches Yusuf by surprise. They had talked of gods in the desert, and they had come out of it with an understanding that they have more in common than this inability to die.

“Your eyes shine quite brightly when you are ill,” Yusuf says, to distract himself from this line of thought, and Nicolò snorts.

One night, after a day of being tossed about by agitated waves, Yusuf wakes and notices that Nicolò is not lying nearby as he usually is. Seasickness, Yusuf expects. He looks contemplatively at the ceiling for a while before pushing himself up and heading above decks to offer his company.

The sea has grown more contentious. The sailors don’t seem to think the ship is in any real danger, though there are more of them on deck than is typical for this time of night. Yusuf stays close to the perimeter, where he’s less likely to get in their way, and keeps a cautious hand on the railing as the ship rolls beneath him. The fresh air is bracing, but he’s inclined to think that it might be safer down below.

Yusuf finds Nicolò near the stern of the ship. He isn’t alone; someone stands before him, speaking too low to hear over the wind, and it takes Yusuf a moment to recognize the carpenter’s mate. As Yusuf draws closer, Nicolò looks up, and relief flashes across his face before being replaced by dismay.

The carpenter’s mate turns.

“You,” he spits, and Yusuf stops, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

“Go back down,” Nicolò says. 

“I came to ask if you would like some company,” Yusuf says. He’s sure he’s mangling the Genoese, but he gets the feeling that speaking Arabic just now might not be wise. “I see you have already found some.”

“He deserves better company than yours.” The young man’s face twists, his lip curling in a way that Yusuf recognizes all too well. He says something else, too rapid for Yusuf to follow, though he catches a few individual words in the string. None of them are complimentary.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says, “go back down. We’re just talking.”

Yusuf knows he should leave. He knows this even before he sees the glint of a blade in the young man’s hand, but something compels him to stay. Stubbornness, probably, fed by an undercurrent of concern. Nicolò can handle himself, but Yusuf is still uneasy with the idea of leaving him here even as he understands that his presence fuels the flame.

“Excellent,” Yusuf says. “I am still needing to practice.”

The carpenter’s mate lunges at him. Yusuf has halfway expected this, and so he moves aside easily enough. Nicolò grabs for the man in the same moment, however, which Yusuf did _not_ expect. The carpenter’s mate turns on Nicolò, and Nicolò takes a step backwards, and a wave hurls the ship skywards--

\--and just like that, Nicolò is gone.

Yusuf and the young man stare dumbly at the spot where Nicolò had been. A commotion kicks up behind him, the sailors shouting back and forth in rapid bursts, and the lanterns swing wildly as the ship continues to buck. Yusuf strides to the railing and leans forward to scan the waves for Nicolò. The moon casts just enough light to show a complete absence of anyone on the surface.

“I didn’t mean…” the young man begins.

Yusuf doesn’t hear exactly what he didn’t mean. He climbs over the railing before his brain has caught up to his body, and in the next instant, he dives into the sea.

The cold of it shocks him. He shakes it off, bobs with his head out of the water, looks around him. 

Still no sign of Nicolò. 

Yusuf draws in a lungful of air and dives. The sea is dark, impossible to see in, and just as difficult to move through. It’s sheer blind luck that brings Yusuf swimming right into Nicolò the third time he surfaces. 

“Nicolò,” Yusuf says--or attempts to say, but his face feels numb, and the word doesn’t quite come. He grabs Nicolò by the sleeve and manages to turn him onto his back. Nicolò doesn’t respond, but Yusuf can’t tell if he’s dead or merely unconscious. He does his best to get a shoulder under Nicolò’s arm and begins to haul the both of them back towards the ship.

Yusuf realizes quickly that he won’t reach it. The sea works against him, as does the night. He can barely see the haze of the lanterns on the deck; it is impossible to believe that the sailors will see him in turn, if he ever manages to swim to the ship. He watches the ship disappear into the dark and feels too deflated to even curse.

Eventually, he summons the strength to turn them around and begins the arduous swim to land. The moon illuminates the inky smudge of the coast, and Yusuf orients himself by it, neither knowing nor caring which shore he's swimming for.

Some time into the journey, Yusuf pauses to tether Nicolò to himself. His tunic is waterlogged and his fingers stiff, but in this, at least, Yusuf's stubbornness serves him well. He makes a poor job of the knots, but they'll hold well enough to keep Nicolò from being flung away from him if Yusuf loses his grip. Yusuf has since given up on swimming and concentrates instead on keeping his and Nicolò’s heads above water. The wind groans around them, and he needs most of his strength just to stop the sea from sucking them into its bowels.

Some time even later, Nicolò revives.

He gasps and sputters and wrenches away from Yusuf, but the tether holds.

"We're in the water," Yusuf says, trying to keep his voice calm but loud enough to be heard. "Can you swim?"

The answer is no. Nicolò tries, but he's more hindrance than help. A high wave drags them under, and when they pop back up to the surface, Nicolò coughs, water streaming from the corners of his mouth. He dies again beneath the next wave before Yusuf can reel him in, and Yusuf is guiltily grateful not to have him struggling on the other end of the line.

Possibly Yusuf dies, too. Between the numbness from the cold and the constant tossing about, he honestly can't tell. The storm finally spends itself just as Yusuf is beginning to think wistfully of the desert, and though the waves don't cease, they lose their battering force and grow small enough that Yusuf is able to float atop them, Nicolò a limp and heavy weight in his arms.

They reach the shore shortly before dawn breaks.

Yusuf drags them just high enough to keep from being pulled back out by the waves, and then he collapses beside Nicolò and immediately falls asleep.

He wakes to someone coughing violently nearby. It’s an effort, getting his eyes to open, but eventually Yusuf pushes himself up to his elbows. Nicolò is on his side with his back to Yusuf, expelling what sounds like half the sea.

Yusuf feels a swell of gratitude for the sight of him--of that silhouette, now familiar, gilded around the edges by the half-risen sun. Morning softens the horizon and washes in apricot hues over the water’s surface, and for the first time since he died, Yusuf is glad for this life that won’t leave him. Exhaustion mingles exhilaratingly with joy, and for some truly absurd reason, his heart sings within him.

Probably it is the adrenaline.

“I’m sorry,” Yusuf says, because he does recognize that none of this would have happened if he’d only left when Nicolò told him to. Yusuf might have gotten stabbed in the night, but at least neither of them would have had to endure this particular nightmare.

Nicolò flops onto his back and rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. “Don’t be,” he says. He pauses to spit out another mouthful of seawater and adds, “I really should have learned to swim.”

Yusuf throws his head back and laughs. “Yes,” he agrees. And then: “Let me teach you.” Nicolò gives him an incredulous look, to which he grins and says, “Why not? We have plenty of time.”


	5. Palermo

They stop in Palermo, where few people look twice at them for keeping one another’s company. Nicolò sorts out the language more quickly than Yusuf does and soon finds himself engaged in trade, facilitating transactions between the varied groups drawn by the city’s splendor and wealth.

“You take very well to this,” Yusuf observes one night after Nicolò finally peels himself away from business to join him for a meal.

Nicolò offers up a wry smile. “I find I am a better merchant than I ever was a priest.”

Yusuf isn’t so certain of this. He’s watched Nicolò converse with others enough by now to know that he has a way about him, an ability to bring peace to even the more fractious interactions. Certain tradesmen seem to think this means that Nicolò is easy to cheat, a notion that is typically quickly disabused. Nicolò is fair to those who trade in good faith but seems to delight the most in the negotiations where someone attempts to swindle him, from which he always somehow emerges with the advantage.

Nicolò has picked up an assistant, also, a boy named Petrus who harbors rather a lot of opinions for someone so young. He’s technically apprenticed to another trader but spends most of his time dodging Nicolò’s heels, observing everything he does with wide-eyed attention.

“I’m surprised his master doesn’t mind,” Yusuf says, shortly after he’s first introduced to the youth.

“I would be surprised if his master notices at all,” Nicolò replies. “The boy has a quick mind. I hate to watch it go to waste.” He winces as Petrus apparently trips over his own feet, spilling their soup all over someone else’s table, and adds, “I’m afraid in some ways he reminds me of myself as a child.”

Yusuf, for his part, returns to books. Palermo’s position as a major port puts a vast array of information within his reach--perhaps not so much as he’d have if they had landed in Córdoba instead, but certainly enough to keep him occupied for some time. He transcribes the occasional formal document, writes a handful of poems, and starts a garden with the vague idea of trying his hand at self-sufficiency.

He has just gone back indoors from checking on the cabbages one evening when a knock comes at the door. Yusuf brushes the dirt off his hands and goes to answer.

Petrus de Loreto stands at Yusuf’s front step, looking small and miserable. “Master di Genova says you would be able to help,” he says, and promptly bursts into tears.

Yusuf stares at him, at a loss. “Master de Loreto,” he begins, but that honestly feels so ridiculous he abandons the attempt immediately. “Petrus,” he tries again. “What has happened?”

Petrus gulps and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This is all my fault.”

Yusuf opens the door wider and beckons for the boy to enter. Petrus hesitates, but eventually his need for assistance wins out over whatever reluctance he may harbor about stepping foot in a Muslim home. It likely helps that he’s spent so much time in Nicolò’s shadow, and Nicolò has spent so much time with Yusuf.

Petrus manages to get a hold of himself and has quieted down to the occasional hiccup by the time he takes the seat that Yusuf pulls out for him. He folds his hands in his lap, visibly forces his shoulders away from his ears, and flicks a glance up when Yusuf sits across from him.

Yusuf waits for Petrus to speak. When no explanation seems forthcoming, he asks, “What is this about Master di Genova?”

Petrus drops his gaze to the table top. “My master,” he begins, only to trail off, his throat working around the words he evidently doesn’t want to speak.

Yusuf knows little about Petrus’s master. A merchant from the north, he trades in goods that Nicolò does not often deal with, which means their paths rarely meet. Nicolò has always been careful not to interfere with the formal relationship between master and apprentice, but he’s said enough here and there for Yusuf to form a largely unflattering impression of the man. This had not been helped when Petrus had turned up to supper one evening with blood still on his lip.

All the same, Yusuf feels a shock run through him when Petrus whispers, “I think he might have killed him.”

Yusuf straightens. He thinks for a moment that he might have misheard, but the abject misery on the boy’s face tells him otherwise. “Who might have killed whom?” he asks around a suddenly dry throat.

“Master di Genova,” Petrus says. “I think he might be dead.”

Yusuf half-rises from his seat. Petrus flinches away from him, face bleaching, and Yusuf forces himself to sit back down. “Petrus,” he says, trying his best not to shout, “please tell me what has happened. Quickly.”

Petrus catches his lower lip between his teeth. Then, haltingly, he begins to speak.

Yusuf is still learning this particular dialect, and so he doesn’t quite understand everything that Petrus says. He understands enough to grasp the situation, however: that Petrus’ master had seen Petrus and Nicolò together, that he had taken offense at what he saw as Nicolò’s butting into his affairs and drawn his sword before either Petrus or Nicolò could talk him down.

“Master di Genova managed to wrestle his blade from him, even though he was injured,” Petrus says, his gaze downcast. A curl of hair has slipped loose to lie against his cheek, and he absently tucks it behind his ear with one long-fingered hand. His voice trembles a touch, though at least the tears have dried. “My master left to fetch his friends. Master di Genova told me to come find you.”

“I do not see what help I can be,” Yusuf says, “if you believe he is dead.”

Petrus swallows. Yusuf recognizes the pause, the long, indrawn breath as he weighs his options. Eventually, he raises his eyes to meet Yusuf’s and says, “He said you would understand about secrets.”

* * *

Yusuf doesn’t stay long enough to find out Petrus’ particular secret. He has his suspicions, but at this moment his concern lies more with Nicolò, who is almost certainly not dead anymore.

Nicolò’s home sits not far from Yusuf’s. Yusuf arrives to find the door wide open but no one else around. Either all the neighbors are away, or the shouting convinced them to keep their noses to themselves.

Yusuf eases into the house, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. “Nicolò?” he calls softly.

“Back here,” comes Nicolò’s voice, in Arabic.

Yusuf finds Nicolò in the room just past the entrance. He’s sitting on the floor, head tilted against the wall and all over blood. He looks around as Yusuf ducks through the doorway but doesn’t get up. “Petrus?” he asks.

“Gone,” Yusuf says. “Along with most of my stores.”

Nicolò nods. “Good.”

“We should leave,” Yusuf says.

“Not yet.”

Yusuf looks around the room, cataloging in his head the things they’ll want to take. “Why not?”

“Guiducius will be back soon.”

“Yes, I know,” Yusuf says. “Which is why we should go now.”

Nicolò sighs. “Yusuf,” he says, and the weight with which he says his name makes Yusuf stop and turn. Nicolò catches his gaze, holds it. “If he does not find my body here,” he says, “he will come to look for us.”

The words come quick to Yusuf’s tongue: that Guiducius will not find them. This is probably untrue, especially given the time Nicolò has already spent arguing about it, but more to the point--if Guiducius goes looking, he’s as likely to find Petrus as he is to find the two of them. This, Yusuf understands immediately, is not an outcome Nicolò is willing to risk.

Yusuf crosses back to Nicolò and crouches down so they are on a level. “What do you intend?”

Nicolò’s eyes are unflinching when he says, “I need you to kill me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It is the only way.” Nicolò considers this, then amends, “The easiest way.”

“The easiest way,” Yusuf points out, “is for you to pretend at death.”

Nicolò shakes his head. “Guiducius is a bully,” he says. “He needs to satisfy himself that he has won.” He presses a hand against the skin of his abdomen, which is smooth and unmarked despite the blood soaked through the torn fabric of his shirt. Pieces of his innards still cling to the hem. “He will not miss this.”

Yusuf understands then what Nicolò wants him to do. “No,” he says flatly.

Nicolò’s voice is gentle when he says, “We have both survived worse.”

“Coming back,” Yusuf says, “is not the same as surviving.” Certainly they have never inflicted worse on one another. Even in Jerusalem, when their rage had been fueled by self-righteous conviction and growing bewilderment, they had not been cruel.

Nicolò looks over Yusuf’s shoulder to the door. Yusuf doesn’t follow his gaze, but he hears the voices that had doubtless caught Nicolò’s attention. When Nicolò turns back to Yusuf, he does so with an underlying sense of urgency. “Yusuf,” he says. “Please. If I am alive when Guiducius returns, I…” His throat bobs. “I may not keep myself from telling him more than he should know.”

A mist descends over Yusuf’s mind, and for a moment all he sees is red. He shakes himself free of it, but only because Nicolò is still watching him, his expectation hanging in the air between them. 

Yusuf exhales with great deliberation, breathing suddenly having grown more difficult. He reaches for his sword and says, “This will hurt.”

“I know,” Nicolò replies. And then: “I am sorry.”

* * *

Afterwards, Yusuf leaves by the rear door and waits in the shadows of the garden. Guiducius enters the house not long after, and Yusuf listens to what little conversation filters through the window. From what Yusuf can understand of it, Guiducius seems to believe that Nicolò has been stealing from him and is furious when he cannot find the money. He is angry about Petrus also, but his primary concern lies more in recovering the gold than his runaway apprentice.

The moon hangs high above the clouds when Guiducius and his men finally depart. Yusuf waits, in case they return, and then cautiously reenters through the back.

Nicolò has not yet revived. Yusuf checks that the wound is healing before sitting down beside the flickering lamplight, ignoring the mess that Guiducius has made of the interior. He gives his sword the most thorough cleaning it has ever received, wiping it with long, methodical strokes that has the additional benefit of clearing his thoughts. Eventually he hears a sharp indrawn breath behind him. He sheathes the blade and gives Nicolò a moment to gather himself before he says, “We should go.”

This time, Nicolò does not argue.


End file.
